


Eternity Awaits

by LilydaleXF



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s11e02 This, F/M, MSR, Post-Episode: s11e02 This, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 21:59:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13373904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilydaleXF/pseuds/LilydaleXF
Summary: Starts shortly after "This" ends with Mulder and Scully on the couch. Conversation ensues between two very tired partners.





	Eternity Awaits

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Anjou for the encouragement and helpful read-through. For @thatgirlnevershutsup and @missanneeliot, because I hope it makes them smile.

"Hey Mulder," Scully says as her fingertips tap clumsily against his thigh. "We should move off the couch."

"Hmmm … no," he mumbles.

"We're not used to running around the woods anymore, or illicitly through buildings while getting in fights and jumping in stairwells. We need to move to a better spot."

"No," he repeats. "No more movement, Scully. Perhaps ever."

"If we stay sprawled on the couch like this with our feet up on our poor, beat-up table, our old, beat-up bodies may very well freeze this way, you do realize that."

"It's a risk I'm willing to take. Here," he says as he blindly bats around his hand until it finds her hand and his fingers lace tightly with hers. "We'll freeze up together."

"Mulder…. We need to go to bed."

"You don't want to freeze together?"

"Not on this decrepit couch I don't."

He huffs out one airy chuckle before saying, "I asked that lady I talked to at the building, Titanpointe, if we – you and me – could be uploaded together in that computer simulation. Like Langly, but together."

They've been talking with their eyes closed, but hers open now. As if he could hear her eyelids move or innately know it would happen at just that moment, which she would not put past him, his eyes open a moment after hers and flick over to her in a quick glance. They're tired-looking, squinty. A bit red. He's spent, and it shows. It makes her want to bundle him up in the blanket currently draped on the couch, to make him tea, to pet his hair. She does none of those things, but she feels her heart glow.

"Being uploaded sounds terrible, Mulder. Trapped as digital bits, not knowing whether we're alive or dead, probably being used unwittingly as pawns in some dark, elaborate scheme. Who knows if we'd even know we were together."

"Langly knew who was around him."

"Still."

"I don't know, Scully, it would kind of be like neurons interconnected. A medical wonder. I'd think you'd be into that."

"I would, I would," she murmurs as her free hand rubs the top of his hand holding hers. "But honestly. The idea is borderline horrific."

His mouth pops open and his brows crush down together in mocking childish offense.

She dismisses him with a quick nod of the head. "Oh come on, you know the us-bonded-together bit isn't the horrific part in this scenario."

His brows relax and lips curl into a grin. He knows what she meant. "I should hope not at this point."

She huffs lightly and pairs it with an understanding grin, which soon fades back into an exhausted droopy line. "Mulder, what do you think just happened? Are people still uploaded? Even after the server was destroyed?"

He's looking straight ahead, but his eyes drift to his phone that not too long ago briefly buzzed again with faces mottled with old school TV static.

While his mind quietly whirls she notices that his bottom lip is sticking out and his hair is spiked in a funny starburst way near where it's been matted down by intense couch reclining. He looks thoughtful, burdened, and ridiculous. She closes her eyes, burns the image of him at this moment into her lexicon, the one that became indexed in earnest after Bellefleur, the time he visited there without her and didn't come back for a lengthy, dreary time. She didn't realize she was doing it back then, but now she actively tends to the lexicon's pages of unabashed devotion. Mulder has no idea it exists. The lexicon, not the devotion, she hopes.

After a time, he answers as her eyes open to the now. "Probably still uploaded. It seemed pretty real," he says.

Hearing it aloud, she has to agree even as her instinct tells her not to, so she nods. There's more to be said on the matter, but not now, not now.

"So would you, Scully? Upload together?"

She looks at him askance. They have always courted in the oddest ways. She smiles softly and squeezes his hand.

Then his stomach grumbles an insistent growl, making them both laugh.

"Another reason to get up, Mulder. We really need a proper meal."

"I'm not sure you're fully appreciating the level of sloth here. I won't even move to call for a pizza."

"There's a bunch of fruit on the floor," she newly observes. It's her fault for aggressively popping the kitchen table over along with its nearly-full fruit bowl, she silently reminds herself with loathing but also a bit of pride.

They both scan the immediate vicinity and stare at all the fruit on the floor that will remain there for quite some time given their current rate of motion defined by their current rate of recuperation from recent events.

"So this uploading thing...," she brings up again to her surprise. She has no end to that thought. The subject is simply on her mind now and came out from her exhausted body as unbidden spoken words.

"She told me they can upload pieces of people's minds whenever they talk on a cell phone."

"So I'll spend eternity saying 'Mulder, it's me, where are you _now_?'" She rolls her eyes. "Sounds fantastic."

"Well," he says as he languidly rocks their linked hands back and forth on her thigh, "we never say goodbye on the phone."

"No, hanging up on each other without a goodbye has always been our special thing."

"I'm serious, Scully."

"So am I."

"When there's no goodbye we're always in endless conversation, in eternal connection, a never-ending feedback loop."

"And that's what's special."

After a short, peaceful silence she asks as she rubs her thumb along his, "Would you really want to upload to the simulation?"

"Hell no!"

Her thumb stops moving. "Then why the hell did you ask me?"

"One, it's still not entirely proven to be a real possibility as opposed to some elaborate Lone Gunman-style, Esther Nairn-assisted computer sorcery that made us think it was real."

"Well, well, now who's the skeptic."

"Two," he continues as if she hadn't spoken, "if I was with you I know you'd find a way to get us out of there."

"Because I'd hate it there even more than you? Entirely likely."

"That and you already destroyed the server once. You have skills, Scully."

"My skills are on hiatus right now." Her head flops over toward him loosely like a rag doll. "I am beyond tired and achy, Mulder."

"Me too," he groans.

"I feel like this will never go away, like we'll feel this way forever."

"Hmmm, I hope so," he says, as he leans his head down purposely against hers in physical if not eternal connection as they fall asleep.


End file.
